Latest interview of Elon Musk.
All Right, everybody, we have a very special guest. Listen, we love all of you. This is this is the most amazing room of innovators in America. We love you all. It's a dinner of equals. But there can only be one number one.
We do. We're Forbes.
We do rank things, and the Forbes two point fifty innovators. The number one innovator and it wasn't that close, to be honest, was Elon Musk. So and we are very honored to have him join us. Elon, are you here?
Oh, we're glad that you're glad that you're here. Thank you. There he is.
You my ranking things, It's true we do.
We're good at it.
And again, first congratulations, it was not that close. There were a lot of there were a lot of battles in a lot of places, but number one was not in doubt. But anyway, this is a room of your people. Yeah, well does there there's a room of your people. I will say they were asking the first question, and we want we want to get really nerdy about innovation. The first question though, that everybody was asking, is all right, ask Elon.
We had one of the.
Great case cases in the world of innovation over the last few weeks.
What's Elon's verdict on the verdict today? Uh? That that that the case in Oakland?
Yes, oh what are you doing?
Yeah?
Guess uh, Well, they basically just decided that the Stafford patients have passed. They did not actually river depending on the web you know, that have been unused or should or chat in stolen, which I think obviously their case. So, but I do think it's somewhat of a bivious situation because you know, what happened was by degrees, I mean, it wasn't it wasn't stolen once it was stolen one
of these at the time. And so we have to say, like, well, was there really even a basis for legal action before you know, the proper to the spell and I don't think there is actually, so you know, like the first step, I believe the point because the first step into adding a full profit thing how to cap for profit and was at a small scale.
And also that.
All start to revert to the charity upon the inventure of appleple intelligence that.
That closes not been remote so it will continue to be a full.
Profit after developing official general intelligence that removal was quite recent, just in the last few weeks.
So it is at this point is it is?
It is whatever an eight hundred million dollar full profit company somehow from a nonprofit. And I think this is a dangerous precedent to set because if it means that someone can start take money as a nonprofit convote that to a full profit when it's successful, it underminds all charitable getting in America.
It certainly would you see a lot of people starting to start nonprofits with the path towards for profit.
Exactly what do you got to lose?
Exactly what you said on next to your appealing optimistic about the appeal.
Yeah, I think we necessarily have to appeal because.
This will this will become precedent, you know which people can actually then essentially allude to charities and use this as a as a basis for doing so, which I think would be reful.
Let's uh, let's talk innovation. Your your title we have up here.
I mean again, you're the CEO of four major companies, even those companies have major companies within those companies.
Was this was this part of the plan or did it just happen.
More or let's just happen I mean, well, let let's just say that when I was in college, I wanted to be part of things that would change the world in a significant way. I didn't originally think I wanted to be doing things in AI because a I was somewhat of a double edged sword.
But I did want to.
Accelerate the transition to sustainable energy economy, which is the sort of electric car as solar and batteries. And you know, I think some some kind of brain machine interface, uh that can give you cybernetic superpowers I think is probably good. It could you know, help people that have brain or spine injuries, you know, restill enable people who have spoken for years to speak again, which is which we've done.
Give people eyesight who have lost both eyes of the optic nerve or maybe have never even seen at all, blind from both.
By direct interface to the.
The optical centers in the brain, you can actually restore eyesight, will give people, I say, have ful and you can enable people to walk again, which I think is profound. I mean these are kind of Jesus level things, you know, like let's say, like when technologists are hitting like Jesus level miracles, you know, like that's pretty good.
How do you.
How do you again, it's asked a lot, but it's it's fun to ask it to you. How do you prioritize? I mean, because you're right, you've got you multiple deities here. If it's if these are Jesus level solutions, which one? Which one do you serve?
Users? Level?
Like?
Okay, pretty good? So and then and the space X is about.
Making life multiplanetary, expanding consciousness to the stars, and hopefully we will make a fundamental breakthrough lated this year, which is how the first fully reusable orbital rocket, which is necessary in order to transport enough tonnage to the moon of Mars to create a self uh, a self growing
city basically to extend civilization to an other planets. I mean, I think probably you need to move a rough order of magnitude about a million tons to the Moon or to Mars to create enough of an of an industrial base to have have the civilization there be self growing, meaning like the acid test being if the resupply shifts from Earth stopped coming for any reason, does it does the the civilization on the movement of Mars continue to
grow or does it die out? And I think I think that's that's a fundamental branching point in the future of civilization or are we a multiplanet space baring civilization or are we stuck on one planet forever? And I do want emphasize that like being a multiplanet the civilization is it doesn't mean like we leave Earth and go somewhere else, because that would just be a single planet civilization somewhere else, right, and a loveer place probably, yeah,
and a tougher place to live than than here. By far, Earth is extremely easy and comfortable compared to the Moon, Mars, or pretty much anywhere else. But you know, I think, I think at some point we want to be a space PreK civilization.
We want to be out there among the stars and and and be Yeah.
So these again, these are huge, huge things you're dealing with.
So when you try to figure out when you get up every morning, is it just kind of like a buffet or is it do you have kind of a plan on what you're going to what you're gonna focus on, because that's something that a lot of innovators here have to deal with on a much smaller scale.
Well, uh, I guess I don't really Uh, I don't really get up and say Hey, what shall I innovate today in a type of thing.
It's really just.
Both building the technology is necessary to extend life beyond Earth. There's you know, there's this, there's the Stalling Internet, where just rebuilding the entire Internet in space but better you know, I guess that's kind of pretty cool. There's yeah, the optimist robot that we're developing, a Tesla, the self driving cars, lower power scale, you know.
Big stuff.
A lot of again, they're all pointy. A lot of them are pointing to becoming an interplanetary Is there is there a time when you could see again putting these companies together and just running one big company. I mean, somebody you have a portfolio, but do you envision that would and would that help you in terms of making any things mesh?
Well?
It it's difficult for me to to sort of comment on that, you know, because you know there's publicly traded companies and publicly traded ones you know about to be so it would be like difficult to you.
No problem, We'll move on. We did the you know, the reports today that you might follow your space x S one this week?
Is that that a go?
I think I'm not allowed to comment on these things.
That's like a period or something to that effect.
That that is the that is the beauty of going public or being in that quiet period. Do you have a favorite of all your we know what you love, all you love, all your your children, all your companies.
Is there a favorite among your companies? Well?
No, I mean I'm not really gonna say that's like what's your favorite kid type of thing? You know, I like, you can't really say that.
You know.
What if it's not your favorite company. Who's your favorite role model as an innovator historically?
Well, I guess you know, I'm obviously a big fan of Nicola Tesla since uh named the company after him.
But also I also, like, you know, I don't know Edison is great too, like some people like them.
I don't like Edison. I think some pretty impressive stuff, and like Neural Electric is like Edison's company. That's I mean, I certainly admired like great scientists, engineers, but I like anyone. I mean, you know, Ben Franklin, Uh, Shakespeare, Newton.
Uh.
You know, we did aspects, we did we surveyed historians, and so you were number one on the two fifty Living List. We did a two fifty oracle on the top three were Edison, you said, Franklin and Henry Ford. So you've you know, you're we should have had you as a judge.
Uh was actually more something people realize because I mean he basically invented mass manufacturing of of complex objects.
Like people didn't really know how to do that before before Ford.
Yes, and like Ford actually created the automotive industry, uh of earth really and uh because because he he pretty much started what became General Motors and then he kind of got, I don't know, kicked out of that or something and then started uh Ford Motor Company and uh and and really developed mass manufacturer complex objects.
It's quite quite a tricky thing. And then everyone just pretty much copied him.
What's what's amazing if you look at the historicalists and even the current list, is just how much innovation comes out of America and how much of the things that everyone takes for granted came out of America. Do you have a do you have a favorite animator who's living today? Besides you know, anybody in this room or anybody who are who are some of your favorite entrepreneurs, innovators you admire?
Who who are your contemporaries.
Now, well, uh hmm, I mean I guess, uh, I mean, I don't really think about these things that much, but h well, I mean I guess.
Uh.
You know, Jensen long Ad and videos like drink pretty great in terms of uh inventing you know, developing ANI computers, and.
Well you may you must say you mentioned Jensen and uh and you were early uh warning about the danger of AI. But also you've been you know, a somebody who's helping pioneer a lot of great things that come out of AI. Right now, Where are you on the scale about being petrified or excited?
Well, I think I'm like so simultaneously both, Honestly. It's like, uh, I mean, at this point, like like when I go to sleep, there's like some AI breakthrough, When I wake up, there's some AI breakthrough, and by lunchtime there's another AI break So.
It's like a headspinner at this point.
It you know, it's it's pretty obvious that we're gonna have AI that is vastly smarter than humans, and.
Already in some ways it already is.
I mean, it seems like AI unequivocally smart more than humans in every way, including in innovation is probably.
No more than a year or two away. We would see.
That's uh, it's happy to think about Jesus, this is kind of worrying.
I hope it's nice to us.
You know.
What, you know, when you look happy about all the things we've asked it to do.
What's something.
Listen, you have a better position to see this in anybody pretty much what's going to happen in five years, And you're seeing that. Maybe a lot of people aren't seeing that. It's going to blow people's minds. That will be doable in five years.
In five years we'll have probably so five years being say twenty thirty one.
I think.
Digital intelligence will exceed the sum of all human intelligence.
That there will be in five years. Probably there might be a let's say, at least one hundred million humanoid robots, but maybe a billion. Yeah, alright, the I mean, and and I predict that the economy is probably twice its current size in five maybe six years, seven at five to seven years, because you're going to hit a doubling period, you know where it's where the economic output is increasing so so fast that you know, plus myask a few years, you're you're you we'll see giant changes.
Mhm, what what you know?
A couple of follow up questions on that, When do you see the first data center in space? Again, you have a better vision on that than pretty much anybody. You know. You're again if when we're going to Mars, it's you're clearly going to be leading the way. When do we get a colony in the moon? When do we get a colonie on Mars?
Three?
Prime question, data center in space, humans on the Moon, humans on Mars timeline.
Center.
Space is much easier than people may think.
I mean, SpaceX at this point has ten thousand satellites in orbook right now, and in the future with Starship, will be launching over ten thousand communication satellites per year, each one of which is much more capable than our current satellites.
So you can expect, you know, probably.
One hundred times more communications capability than currently exist from space. But that will pay in comparison to the tonnage of AI satellites. So, I mean, it's always helpful to use the physics tools of thinking in the limit. If say, if you think of the limit, what is the most amount of AI compute you could possibly bring to bear and the way to access power that's far beyond anything on Earth is in space. So these are some humbling ways to maybe frame the problem and see how tiny
we are here on Earth. We are like microbes on a dust mote compared to the Sun. So all of human civilization currently uses less than a trillionth of the energy of the say the power emitted by the Sun, much less than a trillionth. All human energy, counted as generously as you could possibly imagine, is much less than a trillionth to the Sun's energy. So that means if you were to increase civilizational energy harnessed by a million, you would still be much less than a millionth of
the Sun's and it harness. And another way to think about it is because people suddenly say, what about this form of left of power generation or that form of power generation. I'm luck everything is irrelevant compared to the Sun. The Sun is ninety nine point eight percent of mass
in the Solar system. If all mass that was not the Sun was burnt, and you've extracted the absolute maximum amount of energy from all mass that is not the Sun, the amount of energy produced by the Sun, we're still round out to one hundred percent of the energy produced in the solar system. And then if you teleported two more jupiters from other somehow teleported two more jupiters into our solar system and burnt them too, the Sun was
still be one hundred percent of power rounding out. So really everything is this extremely tiny compared to the Sun. So that therefore, when you go to space, if you if you want to to climb the Cottage Cottter chief scale in any meaningful way whatsoever, you have to go to space and and and uh, you know, our rough estimate is that you could probably do a tarror what a year of AI powered uh you know, sole powered
AI satellites from launched from Earth. That would require let's say something like ten million tons a year of paler to orbit at one hundred killowats per ton, and that would be a tar tearwa per year. The average power usage in the United States is half a terror wort. That would mean you'd be launching twice the rist the amount of AI power. Then then the entire electricity consumption in the United States per year. Yeah, yeah, but this is this is this is We're not breaking any physic here.
This is this is all achievable. Now, if you want to take that up several more orders magnitude, then the things to do is to build a base on the Moon, and construct a mass driver, and build the solar panels and radiators on the moon chips you could probably bring from Earth, but built those the Moon too, and uh, and that would enable you to do about a petawa per year into a solar powered AI.
And I'm not sure how much AI we need at the end of the day, but that's a lot.
That a lot.
What it would be vastly greater than the than the Earth's economy. This economy would be really inconsequential by comparison with that.
No, that's that's a vision of abundance for sure. I know you've had quite a busy day, and you always have a busy day, so we don't want to be mindful of your time.
So I just have two less questions on.
There must be I mean, again, you keep on coming up with these big ideas and you keep executing, then what's a big idea in your head that you haven't deployed yet.
That you'd like to.
Well, you know, I did say for the longest time that people want to booth build tunnels, and then everyone thought I was joking, and then I was like, final, well, let's just create a company, the barn Company, to build tunnels, because this is an obvious way to reduce traffic to zero by going three D with your transport system, just as we go three D with the buildings. It's obviously logical to illogical to.
Expect that you.
Won't have traffic if you have buildings that are three D and a transport system that is two D and everyone tries to go in and out of the three D building at the same time. But if you have a transport network that is three dimensional with tunnels going over the place, then you can address any arbitrary level of traffic. Now, I encourage other people to start tunneling companies because the boring company is the only one as far as I can tell.
It's taking this boring to be the only boring company, right.
Yeah, Honestly, there's like a lot of opportunity, you know, in tunnels, that really is and it's quite hard work building these things, so I hope other people do it too, okay, And I guess there's there's probably a lot of opportunity
in synthetic medicine. So with like these days, you can basically create custom you know, RNA UH And I think I think like that there's sort of we're going from, uh, from a situation where medicine has been analog where we kind of like just find drugs kind of by accident most of the time, like finding sticks in the forest that you know, seem like this stick seems like a useful club type of thing. It's it's it's quite primitive
how we found medication in the past. Now, but once you can sin, since we can now construct synthetic RNA, you can effectively think of medicine.
The future's medicine is being digital.
Like so if you just know what to program into that synthetic RNA strand you can basically, I think, cure almost anything.
Right, challenge to the room, digital medicine and three D transportation. Let's go, let's give you once in competition. All right, last question, quick.
Aircraft probably an opportunity there. I think this is startups in that field.
What kind of quick what kind of aircraft?
Electric aircraft, aircraft.
I'm sure that's coming.
When we when we get together and you know, hopefully you know who knows what the way technology is going to something will be here in another two hundred and fifty years for the Forbes, you know, five hundred celebration innovation. What would you want your Yeah again, you're you're still building it. But when you think about your legacy, and I know it's early, but what would you what would be make you feel good when people look back the way you talked about Edison and Franklin.
What would what would you like people say about you?
You played a useful role in the advancement of civilization.
Pray with in UHH.
I think, by the way, again, this is the most incredible room in America today. I think that's true for all of us. So let's take inspiration. You all are great, but he's number one. Uh Elon must thank you for joining us here at this That's what the A I will say, thank you again, thank you for your time and all that, and thank you. Now we're gonna have them. We're gonna let you go and we're gonna bring the
other award winners up. And Elon Musk again, thank you for your time and all all your good thoughts.
Thanks for listening. To see you in the next episode.